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Classic production gags, including Lady Justice, a.k.a. Doris, made it into the film.

Lighting Metallica Through the Never in 3D IMAX

Metallica is known for making memorable concert moments. It could start out simply as a little pre-planned spark of a lighting fixture that would trigger crashing light towers, destroying the set to a controlled chaos while the bewildered audience sometimes raced for the exits. Variations of these destruction scenes over the years loom large in their legacy. Now they’ve poured all these gags in a virtual cement mixer, set the volume to “roar” and captured it on film — 3D IMAX, no less.

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Illustration by Andy Au

The Venue

No matter what show I design, I always strive for one aspect — to make my show look theatrical. It doesn’t matter if I am illuminating the unveiling of a new automobile, or an opera; I want dramatic lighting. The biggest problem I endure at most events is actually the venue itself. The place where you are holding your show can make for a pleasant experience or a long, slow day.

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PLSN editor Justin Lang

Food on the Road

What is one of the most important aspects of touring, and also one of the things we’re most likely to take for granted? It is something that every single one of us requires, at a minimum, two times a day. Did the title give it away? That’s right, food!

For Justin Lang’s video introduction to PLSN’s Sept. 2013 issue, go to www.plsn.me/201309ednote.

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Marty Postma, LD for Alice in Chains/Uproar Festival

TOUR: Alice in Chains, headlining act for the Uproar Festival tour

UPROAR FEST DATES:  Aug. 9 to Sept. 15, 2013

THE DESIGN: “Nearly all moving lights and LED screens are designed to bend like a shell around the band. The screens’ hanging angles and shape of the lighting trusses help accomplish this. We’ve got 68 moving lights, six small LEDs and five conventional blinders. For LED screens we have six larger panels over the stage and four smaller panels across the front truss.”

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Pippin on Broadway, 2013. Photo by Joan Marcus

Pippin Power

When Tony Awards season arrives, theatre mavens are sometimes befuddled by certain choices that have been made and shows that have been slighted. But when PLSN caught Pippin after it opened this spring, it was obvious why it was nominated for, and won, a slew of those coveted accolades. Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus has revived a 40-year old show and created a vibrant spectacle complete with athletic performers telling a tale of passionate soul searching and patricide under the alluring aura of a circus big top.

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Justin Bieber tour photo by Steve Jennings

Justin Bieber’s “Believe” World Tour

Justin Bieber’s Believe Tour, which began a year ago and runs through December, has the 19-year-old Canadian and his vast entourage flying around the world with more than 150 shows in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central and South America, Asia, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia.

Apart from the look of the show’s opening, where Justin Bieber makes a winged entrance, tour director/production designer Tom Marzullo created the show visuals with little more than a one-word directive from Bieber and manager Scooter Braun — to make it “epic.”

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